Digimarc Corp. , a technology firm that makes digital watermarks, has replaced its auditor, Grant Thornton. The reason, Digimarc and its auditors are unable to reach an agreement on how to account patent licencing revenue.

In October 2010, Digimarc licensed a substantial portion of its patent portfolio to Intellectual Ventures for a $36 million fee and 20 percent of future profits from the patents.

The company filed an 8K on December 27, 2010 in which it states that “during 2010, there was one disagreement with GT on a matter of accounting principles in which GT communicated that it disagreed with the Company’s proposed accounting treatment concerning revenue recognition related to the patent licensing arrangement entered into between the Company and IV Digital Multimedia Inventions, LLC, an affiliate of Intellectual Ventures (“IV”), on October 5, 2010. ” (as stated in the 8K)

TUI Travel, has decided to say adieus to their auditors KPMG. The move comes soon after the company had to take a write-down of £117 million, forcing the company to restate their 2009 results. The company has decided to go ahead and replace the outgoing auditors with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

TUI maintains that they have good working relationship with KPMG. KPMG on the other hand said that relations with some of TUI’s directors had become more strained after the incident. Definitely in this case TUI is not letting bygones be bygones.

News

On November 10,1494, the first book about double entry systems was published by the Italian mathematician, Lua Pacioli, also known as the father of accounting. In his honor the day is celebrated as the International Accountants Day! To all fellow accountants, keep up the great work.

Italy's Antitrust authority fined the big 4 (Ernst & Young, Deloitte, KPMG and PWC) a total of 23 million euros for allegedly conspiring and colluding to divvy up large public consultancy contracts. Looks like the Big 4 need to revise their Ethics class!

Two more corporate shareholders filed a legal claim against Toshiba, linked to the the 2015 accounting scandal, seeking $5.08 million in compensation for damages. This brings the total damages sought to $1.2 billion!